Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Qualcomm deal threatens WiMax & 4G

Acquires 300 patents with Flarion


By Tony Dennis: Friday 12 August 2005, 11:08

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25364

QUALCOMM, which successfully commercialised CDMA, looks set to perform the same trick with OFDM. All thanks to its recent acquisition of Flarion for $600 million.
The huge benefit for Qualcomm is that while Flash Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology was invented in Lucent's Bell Labs, Flarion now holds around 300 patents covering OFDM.

The catch is that network operators such as Japan's NTT DoCoMo (which took an early lead in 3G), have been looking to OFDM to provide the technology for 4G. Plus other 4G style technologies, including WiMax, also incorporate aspects of OFDM.

Qualcomm's new president , Steve Altman has been quoted as saying, "We are willing to license these patents on fair and reasonable terms." Those making WiMax hardware are obviously the firms Qualcomm now has in its sights.

Flarion was left vulnerable to such an approach from Qualcomm after its biggest potential customer for OFDM - Nextel - was acquired by Sprint. µ